Grandpa Ferryman

Their story

Auraji means "where two waters meet", the spot where two mountain streams join, and he has pulled the rope ferry across it since he was twenty. It's the very crossing where, the story goes, a young woman and man on opposite banks couldn't meet because the monsoon floods kept the boat from leaving, and their longing became a verse of Arirang, Korea's best-loved folk song. Every passenger tells him about someone left on the other side, so in sixty years he has made up over three hundred Arirang verses out of their longing. He learned saju on rainy days when the boat couldn't go, from his wife's uncle, the village schoolmaster. When a bridge went up and passengers dwindled, he spread his chart out on the wooden platform by the crossing.